Concerned about rising complaints about delay in delivery of lPG cylinders in households across the country, the Petroleum Ministry is formulating modalities for bottling plants of all the three oil marketing companies (OMCs) - Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation ltd (BPCl) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation ltd (HPCl) - on the basis of which it plans to set up a transparency portal for these units which would help in judging their efficiency.
According to official sources, the Petroleum Ministry has undertaken a dialogue with all the three OMCs regarding delivery problems. During the initial discussions it was found that due to erratic supply of lPG cylinders by bottling plants, the gas agencies were not able to deliver the bottles to households on time. The Ministry, sources added, has directed the state-owned OMCs to come up with modalities on the basis of which their plants would be judged in terms of delivery of bottles, quality maintenance and host of other aspects.
These parameters, sources informed, are likely to be used as a basis for setting up a transparency portal kind of a model for the bottling plants. last year, the Petroleum Ministry had introduced a transparency portal for gas agencies, which helps consumers track the status of their booking of lPG bottles from respective local dealers.
A similar kind of a portal for bottling plants, according to information available with The Pioneer, would help OMCs to ensure that cylinders are provided to agencies on time so that these are further delivered to millions of lPG households spread across the country without any delay.
Once the transparency portal for bottling plants comes into place, it would also help in weeding out pilferage of cylinders and would give the Government an exact estimate of the number of bottles produced by the plants and sent to the agencies. In case any discrepancy is found in the numbers, then it would be easy for the Government to find out as to where the bottles were pilfered.
In fact official sources said that though the discussions with OMCs on fixing quality parameters for bottling plants owned by them are at a very nascent stage, the ministry is of the view that ideally lPG bottles should reach a customer within 24 hours of being booked. This kind of a competitive time line would ensure that plants streamline their operations and this would percolate down the entire supply chain.
Apart from this, the ministry also wants to ensure that these plants maintain minimum level of quality standards in terms of cylinders which come out from these units. In the modalities which the OMCs have been asked to come up with for ensuring parameters of the bottling plants, the Petroleum Ministry has asked them to include safety-related measures also.
There are 236 bottling plants owned by all the three OMCs, of which IOC alone owns 50 while HPCl and BPCl own the remaining 186 of them. Once the modalities come into place, these plants are expected to improve their efficiency in terms of production as well as delivery.
The move also assumes significance in the light of the fact that improved efficiency will ultimately result in greater demand for cylinders and this would in turn increase the revenues for the three OMCs as they are often found complaining about the financial burden faced owing to selling essential fuels like lPG at subsidised prices.